Picture the landscape of places in Orange County as it was a nearly 25 years ago, and all the concert venues, movie theaters, theme parks and other places you went to then to have a bit of fun.

Now look around and consider how many of those places are gone today, and how many of your new favorites have emerged since 1994, when Best of Orange County was published for the very first time.

We wanted to compare the present with the past in some of those categories, and think about what’s gone away and what has replaced it. And one of the biggest changes has come about where we watch our movies.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a theater today that resembles the places we saw “The Lion King” or “Forrest Gump” when they came out in 1994. They were often inside a shopping mall, such as the four-screen cinema run by United Artists, and later Edwards, inside the Westminster Mall, which lasted from the mid-’70s until just after the millennium, when it closed.

You might have even gone to the drive-in: the Hi-Way 39 Drive-In on Beach Boulevard near the 22 Freeway in Westminster was still showing movies to people who — check this out, kids! — actually sat inside their cars and trucks and whatnot to watch them. This last drive-in in Orange County closed down just over 20 years ago to be replaced by a Walmart.

Today deluxe is the ticket. High-end theaters such as Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas in Laguna Niguel offer not only reserved tickets and reclining seats, though many theaters have those features now, but alsofood that’s much fancier than in olden days — think skinny truffle fries, charcuterie plates and New England lobster rolls in place of buckets of faux-butered popcorn or wrinkled hot dogs slowly spinning on a tube-steak treadmill — as well as beer, wine and cocktails delivered to your seats.

A generation ago your choices for live music were much more limited as well. For major bands and artists you had the Arrowhead Pond, now known as Honda Center, which had just opened in 1993, and Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. The Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and the Galaxy in Santa Ana were where medium-size acts played, the Crazy Horse in Santa Ana featured country performers, and there were also a few scattered very small venues such as Linda’s Doll Hut in Anaheim.

Honda Center still hosts arena-filling performers but Irvine Meadows has closed, replaced by the slightly smaller FivePoint Amphitheatre a few miles away in Irvine. The Coach House still presents its typical mix of music but the Galaxy was renovated and turned into a two-room venue whose owners stuck with the astronomy theme by naming the big space the Observatory and the smaller one the Constellation Room.

We now have House of Blues in Anaheim after relocating from Downtown Disney, as well as the City National Grove of Anaheim and the Yost Theatre, a vintage hall that was renovated a few years back. The Crazy Horse shut down and Linda sold the Doll Hut, though it remains an active, if niche, venue, and there are other small restaurants and bars that regularly feature live music, including the Wayfarer in Costa Mesa, the Slidebar Rock-N-Roll Kitchen in Fullerton and Marty’s Bar & Grill in Tustin.

Theme parks in Orange County were pretty much the same as they’d always been in 1994, with Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm both still in their original footprints. Knott’s has stayed mostly the same, though a few attractions have changed over the years, including this year’s opening of the new roller coaster HangTime. Disney, on the other hand, went on a building boom that still hasn’t ended, opening Disney’s California Adventure, which this year introduced a new Pixar-theme land to accompany its Marvel additions of recent years.

And next summer, the much-anticipated Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge comes to Disneyland proper, which is sure to bring more throngs to the already hugely popular Disneyland Resort complex.

Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. with degrees in English and Communications. Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Earned his first newspaper paycheck at the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, fled the Midwest for Los Angeles Daily News and finally ended up at the Orange County Register. He's taught one or two classes a semester in the journalism and mass communications department at Cal State Long Beach since 2006. Somehow managed to get a lovely lady to marry him, and with her have two daughters. And a dog named Buddy. Never forget the dog.